
Class 

Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIE 




HOLY MIGHT 



Corregio 



Straws from me Manger 



or 



Thoughts On 
Christmastide 



SJtljtt ©bata! 

H. B. RIES, 

Censor Librorum 
June i8tk, 1917 



imprimatur 

* S. G. ME5SMER, D. D. 

Archbishop of Milwaukee 
Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel 1917 



/ 



Copyright 1917 
Rev. James H. Cotter, L.L.D., Litt. D. 



©CI.A470973 



Straws From 4ie Manger 

or 

Thoughts On Christmastide 

Re%). James H. Cotter, L. L. D. Litt. D. 

\ I 

Au4\or of 
"Skakespeare's Art" and "Lances Hurled at &e Sun'* 



Diederich-Sckaefer Co. 

Milwaukee, Wis. 

1917. 



INTRODUCTION. , .' 



THESE thoughts 
Have appeared in 
< TKe Columbiad and 
The Columbian. 'That 
me$ may be productive of 
mought in me reader is 
me wisk of 

Hlie Author. 



Ironton, Ohio, 
June 7&, 19 17. 



SEP -8 1917 



DEDICATION. 



H"he Author is pleased to 
dedicate this volume to 

Rt. Rev'd nixomas J. Shahan, 

as an expression of reverence 
for his Exalted Station, as 
-well as a token of Esteem 
for his renowned Scholar- 
ship. 



Ironton, Ohio, 
June, 7&1, 1917, 



CONTENTS. 

I. The Promise of Christmas 1 

II. The Advent of Our Lord - 3 

III. Bethlehem's Night - ... 7 

IV. Christ's Mother ----- 10 
V. Christmas and Its Creed - - - -16 

VI. A Christmas Box for Christ - - 19 

VII. Christmas and Its Message - - 25 

VIII. The Real Christmas - 30 

IX. Christmas and the Little Ones - - 33 

X. Christmas Benediction - 36 

XI. Our Christmas Duty ... - 38 

XII. Christmas Kindness .... 40 

XIII. Christ, the Poor and the Children - - 45 

XIV. Mars and the Christ Child 49 
XV. Christmas Angels - - - - - 59 

XVI. Christmas in Art 64 

XVII. Christmas Loneliness - - - - 69 

XVI'II. Christmas Sins - - - - - 71 

XIV. Welcome the New Born Year - - 73 

XX. New Year Greeting .... 76 

XXI. New Year Gratitude - - - - 79 

XXII. The Use of Time ----- 84 

XXIII. The New Year's Value - 88 

XXIV. Good Resolutions ----- 92 
XXV. Little Christmas - .... 96 




I. 

THE PROMISE OF CHRISTMAS. 

jHRISTMAS, of all the feasts, 
not only makes the most pro- 
found as well as happy impres- 
sion, but covers more of the religious 
year. It begins with the Ave of the 
Angel and ends with the Ave of the 
Magi. The Heavenly herald who salut- 
ed the Virgin at prayer with his "Hail, 
full of grace!" doubtless led the heavenly 
hosts that made musical skies in Bethle- 
hem when the expectations of the An- 
nunciation were gloriously realized in 
the Nativity. 

Our mind reverts to the angel of the 
Annunciation in Boticelli's great paint- 
ing, now in the Pitti palace in Florence. 
We never saw anything so devotional; 
we never heard a voice as eloquent as 
the mute homage given by Gabriel's wor- 
shipping eye. It spoke as well as looked. 
Memory, after two decades is even now 



2 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

fascinated by the reverence of it all. That 
the Ambassador from the courts of glory 
should so venerate with all his soul lus- 
trous in his eye the shy little virgin, sug- 
gests the knowledge Heaven entertained 
of the majesty of the new Eve. The facial 
expression of the angel tells likewise of 
the grand humility of our Queen, as it 
betokens the fact that he is not at first 
hearing, in any way understood. The 
scene is suffused with the light of glory 
flashing from the heavenly w 7 ing and 
above all from Mary's royal benignity. 
Here we learned for the first time from 
paint on canvas, the full sense of The 
Hail Mary, and often since have we felt 
humbled in the thought that the paint- 
er's color could say more than living lip 
could dare express. 



THE ADVENT OF OUR LORD. 



II. 

THE ADVENT OF OUR LORD. 

"This is the month, and this the happy 

morn, 

Wherein the Son of heaven s eternal 

King, 

Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, 

Our great redemption from above did 

bring, 
For so the holy sages once did sing 
That He our deadly forfeit should release, 
And with His Father work us a perpetual 
peace." 



ILTON wrote nothing more true 
than these lines which chant of 
Christ's birth, with our redemp- 
tion and atonement its happy sequence. 
The birth of Christ was the nativity 
of charity. Before Christ came, love 
was locked from the homes of men; in 
fact, there was no such word as home, 
for there was no such term as charity. 
The cruelty of Herod, the ravenous 
wolves of Rome, the "eye for an eye" of 




4 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

the people nearest to Christ's laws — all 
these were symbolical of an age when 
men's hearts were as hard as the soldier's 
breastplate upon which was shattered the 
javelin winged with fierce hate. The 
arena with its orgies catered to the thirst 
for blood, and even the gentle maiden 
hesitated not at home to stab her female 
slave (perhaps of better birth then her- 
self) nor, abroad in the balconies of the 
Coliseum, to invert her thumb, and thus 
vote for the death of a victim in the spat- 
tered sands. Man pitted against man 
tigers of Nubia tearing the victor over 
his fellow to pieces — these were the ex- 
pressions of a blood-drinking time. 

In such a day, out from heaven comes 
the angels with their love song, and out 
from Mary's womb comes the Prince of 
charity to contradict the mad spirit whose 
purpose, as the satirist of Roman morals 
says, was "to corrupt and be corrupted," 
and whose joy was to cut capers over the 
victims of its murders. Christ smiles in 
Bethlehem, and the heart of the old 
world is warmed into a new life, and the 



THE ADVENT OF OUR LORD. 5 

summer of Christ's love is spread through 
man's long and dreary winter of discon- 
tent. He comes as a rebuke to earth's 
selfishness, by asking nothing and yet be- 
stowing royal gifts. He comes as a 
paragon of kindness, by loving even 
hate. He comes poor as a beggar, and 
yet is earth's King and eternity's Crown. 
He comes as a victor, and nevertheless 
presents only the shivering form of a 
little babe. He comes into the field as 
a peasant, and yet not Caesar in all his 
glory ever had name like unto His, nor 
home to whose hallowed precincts the 
generations make ceaseless pilgrimage. "^4 

Never was there such a university as 
Bethlehem's stable. There were laid the 
fundamental principles of the colleges 
of all time; there was commenced a sys- 
tem of heavenly education that contra- 
dicted all the usages of antiquity and 
made for the wonders of eternity. There, 
before the Infant's lips could speak, was 
taught a lesson of love and humility that 
has inspired the kindling zeal of a se- 
raphic St. Francis of Assisi, or the self- 



STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

^abnegation of the wonderful scholar of 
Aquin, who dies in the dust gazing at 
the Child of Bethlehem as Calvary's 
martyr. 

Great reason, then, have we to sing our 
song of gladness, for the angels are ap- 
plauding the deed of God's Son and in- 
toning His glories in their heavenly har- 
monies. Great arguments have we to 
stand, not afar off and gawkingly wonder 
at the marvels of Christmas night but, 
near the cave, to let its light into our 
minds, its love into our hearts, its grace 
into our souls, and be one with the Holy 
Family sheltered there. 



BETHLEHEM'S NIGHT. 




III. 

BETHLEHEM'S NIGHT. 

Shepherds at the grange, 

Where the Babe was born, 

Sang with many a change 

Christmas carols until morn. 

IONGFELLOW has written 
beautiful things, but none so trip- 
pingly happy as when the fires of 
Christmas-tide lit genius at his page. 

It has always seemed to us not merely 
accidental that shepherds should, with 
Night's "thousand eyes," first see the 
wonders of Bethlehem. God, says Holy 
Writ, is not studied in the whirlwind, 
and if so, what greater calm for thought 
than the frosty night with its stars and 
sleeping hills? Meditation then breathes 
its native atmosphere. God then is not 
far away, no more than is the sky, the 
Creator's footstool. The distractions of 
the day have departed and quietude per- 



8 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

mits us to hear the whisperings of con- 
science, lost in the varied voices of busy 
life. The shepherds' simplicity per- 
mitted them to see Him who is sublimity, 
for the simple and the sublime are 
kindred. 

Then, too, the innocent fleeces man- 
tling the hills, tell us of the "Lamb of 
God." The pitiful bleating of the ewe 
for its lost one beautifully suggests the 
anxiety of Him who in a later day was 
"like a lamb led to the slaughter," and 
who shed for us both tears and blood. 
The shepherds' crook are now croziers 
that are the staffs of our religious rulers. 

Thus our dear Lord, in choosing night 
and in first teaching shepherds, gave a 
sweet prophetic touch to that aftertide 
that would make sheep of wolves and 
have the world led to "one fold." 

Thus Christmas night in Bethlehem is 
a forecast of the gentle sway of the 
Heavenly Shepherd then, now, and for- 
ever-more. 

In the fields, too, and not in the busy 
market-places, are the real followers of 



BETHLEHEM'S NIGHT. 9 

the Shepherd, for the great centres of 
humanity have, today, no room for Christ 
and prefer to his saving solicitude the 
Herods of our time, the while the coun- 
tryplaces of the world humbly follow 
His compassionate and salutary guid- 
ance. 



10 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




IV. 

CHRIST'S MOTHER. 

jN December 8th, 1854, the dogma 
of the Immaculate Conception 
was proclaimed, thus making an 
article of faith of the hitherto pious belief 
of all the Christian ages from St. Ephrem 
in the fourth century to the time of Bos- 
suet, when the mighty orator in rhapsody 
addressed Christ: "Thou art innocent by 
Nature, Mary only by grace; Thou by 
excellence; she only by privilege; Thou 
as Redeemer, she as the first of those 
whom Thy precious blood has purified." 
Up to the sacred date of Mary's new 
feast, the many generations had their ar- 
guments and explanations for and against 
the great question, but when Rome spoke 
there was an end to discussion and true 
Christians the world over in joy and 
pride joined their voices in applauding 
the great teacher of Christendom and in 



CHRIST'S MOTHER. 11 

hallowing the name of her who was her- 
alded as Mother of God by an angel but 
mother of man by our God. 

Unlike other saints who were purified 
in the womb, it was congruous to God's 
infinite purity and eternal majesty that 
His mother should never be for one mo- 
ment under the dominion of His arch- 
enemy, the devil, and so she was made 
spotless in the first faint breathings of her 
infant soul. She was not reclaimed 
through Baptism from sin. She never 
knew sin's grossness; she never felt its 
taint; she was at no time a convert. God 
preserved her ever as a glorious taber- 
nacle to house His eternal Son. He, 
whom the devil in all his fiendish malice 
dared not tempt to impurity, was the 
Child of a womb consecrated to a heaven- 
ly work, for God's finger touched the 
sanctuary where He was to abide, and 
God's breath incensed the first moment 
of the life of her who was to be so won- 
derful in all His mysteries and miracles. 

In exalting the Blessed Virgin, the 
Church has uplifted womankind. To 



12 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

know what Christianity has done for the 
gentler sex in venerating Christ's Mother, 
we have only to look at the nations to- 
day that are disfigured by the sensuality 
of Mahomet or by the orgies of heathen 
worship. Woman there is not "the lesser 
man," but a "soulless animal," whose 
humanity is tortured by a perpetual con- 
sciousness of beastly treatment. Through 
Christianity, Mary is venerated and in 
the same ratio w r omankind in general is 
revered. 

Mary is ever compared to Eve before 
the Fall; if, before the Fall, therefore, to 
a time when original sin did not exist. 
The dear mother of Christ was always 
as Eve once was — majestic in innocence, 
undefiled by the "trail of the serpent." 
She was declared by the Archangel Ga- 
briel as "full of grace." If full, her 
capacity was perfect, besides being per- 
fectly satisfied. There was then no actual 
deficiency; immaculate she was, and we 
exhaust all the force of words and all 
the elegancies of speech in singing our 



CHRIST'S MOTHER. 13 

litany of praises to earth's spotless Mother 
and Heaven's Mighty Queen. 

What glorious virtues our gentle 
Mother had ! In Faith how she excelled ! 
She heard the infant cry; she saw His 
utter helplessness; she was perpetually 
conscious that her little strength bore 
Him from place to place; she hid Him 
from the cold; she fled with Him from 
the tyrant; and despite all these things 
she never once wavered in her belief that 
her Child was her God. 

In Hope how grand she was! Trust- 
ing Divinity, she looked beyond human- 
ity. She waited on God's pleasure and 
dictated no conditions. She hoped on 
perseveringly, although she never missed 
the awful tests to be withstood. She saw 
the brutal scourging, the cruel corona- 
tion, the frightful death, and yet through 
it all she was illustrious in patience be- 
cause glorious in hope. She never 
fainted, but ever trusted that the weak- 
ness of humanity prefaced the strength of 
Divinity — that the horrors of Calvary 



14 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

were but the prelude to the glories of 
Thabor. 

In charity, what an exemplar is the 
Blessed Mother! She hated sin and kept 
far from it, but she loved the sinner even 
though by his meanness and malice he 
murdered her peace and Son. 

All honor, then, to the Immaculate 
Mother of the Saviour. Heresy has 
hooted at the dignity of the Mother, say- 
ing she is no more than any other woman. 
God Himself thought otherwise, His 
angels were of a different mind; His 
saints contradict the thought of this 
world. Heresy by expelling the Mother 
has dishonored the Son, and so we have 
the cursed lesson given humanity that 
Christ was no more than any other man. 
Christ and His Mother go together in 
faith; to know one is to learn the other; 
the doctrine of the one is supplementary 
to dogma on the other, for you cannot ap- 
preciate the Son without venerating the 
Mother, as did He. 

O, Mother Immaculate! take from our 
soiled hands into yours all white and 



CHRIST'S MOTHER. 15 

beautiful the praise and the prayer given 
to thee, making the one worthy of thee 
and the other efficacious for us who know 
that in thee the Lord of Glory has the 
best memory of this sad earth from which 
we pray and praise. 



16 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




CHRISTMAS AND ITS CREED. 

|HE doctrine of Christ's divinity 
and humanity has been assailed 
by the world and defended by the 
Church, Christ's spouse, for whom He 
specially prayed. 

In the first ages of Christianity, the 
Docetists and Gnostics denied the reality 
of Christ's body, because, say they, sub- 
stantially, it would be evil to suppose that 
the great God of Heaven and Earth 
would wed in his personality a subject so 
base as human flesh. They forgot that 
their defense of Christ's dignity was an 
impeachment of his veracity, for, if 
Christ had not a body, then His birth 
would, blasphemy to say, be an idle trick 
of the Divinity, his professed sufferings, 
an imposition on our credulity, and He 
himself, an imposter worse than Ma- 
homet of a later day. 



CHRISTMAS AND ITS CREED. 17 

At another time, Sergius asserted that 
the operation and will of Christ's human 
soul were absorbed by His Divinity, again 
impugning Our Lord's character, for it 
is written, that Our Lord acquired knowl- 
edge, improved His human thoughts, and 
gave a better expression to them as years 
grew with him. 

Christ had a mother, on whose knees 
He sat as a Babe, whose lips He kissed 
in love, whose name He spoke in rever- 
ence, whose commands He obeyed 
promptly and perfectly. He had a 
mother; a mother supposes birth — birth, 
humanity — and the "Word made flesh," 
Divinity. Nothing could be wanting in 
soul or body, else He would not be a 
man; nothing was defective in Divinity, 
or He would not be the Infinite, God. 

Not only have the Natures, separately 
regarded, been attacked by heresy but 
also their union in one Person. Eutyches 
was condemned by the Church for assert- 
ing Christ had but one Nature. 

Later on, Nestorius, and at another 
time Gunther, was reprobated for dar- 



18 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

ing to propagate the absurd fallacy that 
Christ was two persons. There is but 
one person, the second person of the 
Blessed Trinity, for the reason that in 
the Crib there was one babe. There are 
two natures, one Divine, hence infinite in 
itself; the other, human, nevertheless in- 
finite in value; not because of itself, but 
on account of the Divine Person in whom 
it subsists, and of whom its acts are predi- 
cable. Mystery of love and condescen- 
sion! which should make us love Christ 
all the more and doubt Him never. 



A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 19 




VI. 

A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 

GENTLE dash of heavenly light, 
a chorus of tender and joyous 
voices, the swirl of radiant drap- 
ery softening the brilliant scene and rob- 
bing of dread, with its kindly whiteness, 
the purpose of the angelic strain — behold 
the details of an event which made 
Bethlehem's shepherds rub their eyes and 
wonder they were awakened before 
dawn. Behold the setting of a scene 
which will never vanish from the sky- 
wall of faith, for no Leonardo Da Vinci 
painted in the colors, but angels' pig- 
ments fashioned it, and the finger of the 
Omnipotent framed the unique picture. 
Hearken to the heavenly chorus, 
"Glory to God in the highest, and on 
earth peace to men of good will!" — 
which awoke humanity from its sluggard 
sleep of darkness, and still causes us, 



20 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

children of twenty centuries after, to look 
aloft and wonder. The sleeping Jacob, 
in the olden time, as he rested his head 
on the hard pillow made of Haran's 
blocks, saw angels going and coming 
from the gateway of the sky, but the Gali- 
lean night-watchers beheld a seraphic 
army breaking through the blue, hiding 
in eclipse the stars of night as they sang 
of the God of Day, now, in assumed 
humanity, cuddled in a corner of earth's 
night. 

As curious, if not as innocent, we rise, 
and in spirit join the shepherds obeying 
the suggestion, "Let us go over to Bethle- 
hem, and let us see this Word that is to 
come to pass, which the Lord hath 
showed to us." Crossing the frosted 
field, stepping on crunching grass and 
crackling grape leaf, we enter the cave 
made glorious with heaven's greatest 
wonder, the birth of God incarnate. 

The shepherds produce their frugal 
gifts, hidden under their fleecy cloaks; 
kings, bejeweled with the luxury of 
Eastern authority, lay down their crowns, 



A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 21 

the while they offer their proud gold, 
and homage make, and smoking incense 
bring. What have we? Our hands are 
empty of offerings, our souls tenantless 
of worth ! We stand abashed, and would 
fain skulk away, but the fascinating eyes 
of the Babe are on us and will not let 
us go; the tender Mother interchanges 
glances at us and Him and holds us to the 
place; the solicitous and simple foster- 
father of the new-born gives us courage 
to remain, for by his peasant character 
he helps to offset our pitiful plight. Kneel 
we must, since royalty is bowed, and so 
we consult our poverty to find something 
to be made worthy as a gift to Him, whose 
coronation as King of man happened 
while He lay on straw, with no throne but 
a manger, no temple but a stable. 

Three gifts we have wherewith to do 
adoration to the Trinity of which He is 
the second person — three gifts withal as 
royal as the three sovereigns whose jin- 
gling and caparisoned camels bore them 
from afar. We have Will, Memory, and 
Understanding; the first wherewith to re- 



22 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

solve, the second to regret, and the third 
to learn our abasement. 

Our will, we offer. Yes, but conscience 
tells us it is a cripple limping on a crutch. 
We know it, but history informs us, too, 
that God has more than once hung up 
the crutch as a trophy of His mercy, sent 
the beggar away enriched, and made the 
infirm bound like the roe, in joy and 
praise and promise. Let us, then, in 
shame kneel here in the shadow, where 
the poor light does not reach, and give 
Him what He gave and we all but de- 
stroyed, our will, that he may re-erect it 
and give us strength, to climb the heights. 
He has no word of condemnation; the 
lustre of His smiling eye will be for us 
ever a light serene to guide us on life's 
dangerous way. "Wonderful," indeed, 
the Child has, according to Isaias, proved 
himself, for our poor gift seems to please 
Him just as much as the offerings of the 
generous, presented on adoring knee. 
After all, the divine Child came to give 
more than to receive. He has everything, 
and, in the last analysis, we, nothing. 



A CHRISTMAS BOX FOR CHRIST. 23 

Encouraged, we offer memory. A ray 
from His face shows us the basket of 
abominations we dared present Him, but 
his infinite pity touched the gift and 
straightway our wretched ingratitudes, 
strewn over our barren past, are hidden 
from our eye with the gilding of the glory 
of His compassion. 

Our understanding, we present, but 
fain would fly away as His wisdom shin- 
ing the while, shows us the lamentable 
want of consideration that prompted our 
gift and the immeasurable follies that 
made it repulsive even to our own poor 
sight. Christ pities us, and by a gentle 
touch of His infant finger reassures us, 
giving instead of the smoking torches of 
profane learning, the clear light of His 
grace to kindle our intellectual progress, 
bestowing his laws gentle as was he lov- 
ing — and establishing His Church, the 
treasury of truth. 

From Bethlehem we return, to find in 
Christ's Church everything realized in 
fact. On our altars He is re-born; in our 
tabernacles He is cribbed; in our sarictu- 



24 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

aries He awaits rich and poor, learned 
and ignorant, purpled and beggarly, vir- 
tuous and vicious. He has a word of 
commendation for the wise, a term of 
pity for the foolish, a voice of solicitous 
counsel for the sinner. 

With the thought of the time when our 
soul shone in innocence begotten of the 
loving Babe, let us offer the Sacramental 
Christ our filial homage conjoined with 
contrition for our lost past. With the 
consciousness of our vacillating natures, 
let us give Him our will that He may 
bestow fortitude, our memory that He 
may hear its moan and take from it its 
saddled burdens, and our understanding 
that we may ever know His voice, be it 
in the infant cry of Bethlehem, the su- 
perb logic of the Man, or the dying groan 
of Calvary's Martyr. 

Let this, then, if naught else, be our 
Christmas box to the dear Christ, whose 
birth was the author of all the cheer, good 
will, and mirth of the very same world 
that forgets Him now, as it denied Him 
shelter nigh twice ten hundred years ago. 



CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 25 




VII. 

CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 

[HEN prophets have veiled their 
faces, beholding in dazzling 
vision the Expected of Nations, 
even through the mists of distant ages; 
when celestial choristers have grown 
wildly ecstatic in their rapt song announc- 
ing the Wonderful ; when the lines of the 
evangelist tremble with devotion as they 
narrate the unique details of Bethlehem's 
marvelous story, what approach will be 
made the discussion of the sublime theme, 
Christmas? With heart dull, with mind 
unmusical, with soul uninspired, breath- 
ing words, not warm like the tender flute- 
notes of the gentle shepherd, but cold as 
the hoarfrost that fleeced Christ's cave, 
we would fain fly in fancy to the hillside, 
thrilled with wonderment, and there, 
prostrate among the night-watchers, beg 
heaven for one touch of starlight to say 



26 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

that which will prove fitting servitor to 
the majesty of the Newly Born. 

What good has Christmas done for 
mankind? Wonders, from every view- 
point. Christmas reversed the current of 
human thought and deed, made men re- 
gard moral beauty superior to physical or 
intellectual beauty, right more than 
might, even though encased in the mail- 
coat of Augustus, patient poverty better 
than wealth, honor more than station, and 
Christmas faith a gift more dear than 
kingly title. Alone in its greatness is this 
work, but more glorious does it appear 
when we consider the means whereby it 
was wrought. 

Were the world our Lord's coun- 
sellor, it would say: Come, O Christ, in 
the splendor of Thy kingship I Bring Thy 
retinue of angelic warriors who, in the 
olden time, struck dead the proud hosts 
of Sennacherib! Send thy angels through 
earth's kingdoms, to trumpet Thine ad- 
vent! Then wilt thou bring about great 
things, for the philosopher over there at 



CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 27 

Athens says rightly, "The means must 
be proportionate to the end." 

How false does human prudence show; 
how weak does human strength appear, 
when we consider the ways of Christ! 
He came, not in strength and yet con- 
founded the strong, for Bethlehem, 
though humble, has had more pilgrims to 
its shrine than all the proud palaces of 
the world. He came, not panoplied with 
legions, for the meek Galilean never drew 
the sword, and in a later time, rebuked 
St. Peter for unsheathing it in holy anger. 
He came, not with glory, for that would 
countenance pride and flatter mankind, 
whose arrogance brought "death unto 
the world and all our woe." He was born 
in a place like the vault of the dead, and 
pride was mocked at his bringing forth. 
The world never saw a royal birth so 
humble, never saw a king use such means 
of subjugation, never saw a subjugation 
so complete, so catholic. 

Humility was one of these rare means. 
Christ in his crib is God on his eternal 
throne. He there tells human reason that 



28 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

it is most like Him when it learns its de- 
pendence and bows before mystery. He 
tells us that the wisest are those who 
have learned their own ignorance. He 
tells humanity that humility is the best 
wisdom, as it empties the soul of self and 
makes room for God's grace. And here 
let us consider that the Divinity was born 
in a place where humanity did not dwell 
— in a cave untenanted, and not fashioned 
for human residence; so will He come to 
our hearts with His grace and promise 
of glory, if we rid them of self and of the 
human, even though in the process, as in 
the cave, well nigh nothing will be left. 
Charity, whose law was ignored by the 
world, was another instrument in the 
hand of Christ for the world's conversion. 
Before the Babe's lips could speak the 
after-doctrine, His infant form taught the 
the wondrous lesson. As, at His birth, 
the herdsman was as welcome to Bethle- 
hem as the Eastern King; so in the after- 
time poor Mary Magdalene was received 
on the same footing with the ruler of 
Capharnaum. Our dear Christ never 



CHRISTMAS AND ITS MESSAGE. 29 

counted out of His love even the Jew who 
denied His mother shelter, Herod whose 
cruelty would lap His blood, the Pharisee 
whose envy hounded Him to slaughter. 
He loved with His immense heart the 
world that hated Him, and finally love 
triumphed in changing hate into love. 
This was Christ's way; it should be ours, 
and our lives would every one, have suc- 
cessful issues. 

We stand, alas! enraptured by the 
meanings of Christmas and awed by its 
mysteries, but, mistaking admiration, 
which is only natural, for emulation, 
which is virtue's fruitful parent, we let 
the great day go as it comes, — a mystery 
that remains outside us, never touching 
us with its glory. Were we to rightly 
accept Christmas and its message, we 
should become true christians inflamed 
with zeal for the Christ whom men and 
nations are every day ruthlessly betray- 
ing. 



30 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




VIII. 

THE REAL CHRISTMAS. 

[HEN a sightless woman said : "the 
only real blind person at Christ- 
mas is he who has not Christmas 
in his heart," she uttered, from out her 
darkness, a truth as beautiful as a ray of 
light. There is something pathetic and 
profound in a blind girl's pen — pathetic 
because of her curtained light, profound 
because begotten free from the distrac- 
tions that blindness exclude. So in this, 
her saying, there is a tender feeling as 
well as a solid sensible idea. Is it not 
very true that unless Christmas in its 
meaning, enters the soul, there is no real 
Christmas? A man may have eyes that 
will see well anything physical and yet 
will not perceive the meaning of Christ- 
mas, will not feel its sentiment, will not 
compass its religious sense. He is, in 
very truth, blind. On the other hand, the 



THE REAL CHRISTMAS. 31 

poor girl who gropes her way through 
life may feel more deeply and touch more 
tenderly the great truths that give Christ- 
mas its being and its name, and she, in- 
deed, though darkened physically, radi- 
ates with light and sees well. 

From the day when the poor man cried 
out to the Author of Light and Life, 
"Lord, that I may see!" to Goethe who, 
when dying, prayed for "light! more 
light!" men dread darkness; and yet how 
little they value Truth that is the light of 
the "mind's eye," that is the grace of life, 
and the promise of everlasting light. 

It is remarkable how much the sense of 
feeling makes up for sight, so much so 
that in the super-sensitive finger tips of 
a blind Italian sculptor there was found 
actual grey matter, proper to the brain. 
Another blind genius declared that all 
the eyes are good for is to keep one from 
running into a wheel-barrow. Be this 
as it may, it would seem that the only time 
the blind are blind is when they are re- 
minded of their infirmity. This is hard 
to understand, for it is difficult to see how 



32 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

the loneliness of perpetual night would 
not beget melancholy, and how impati- 
ence to see all the prismatic beauties of 
the earth and sky would not create 
wretchedness. We ought to thank the 
good God who has given us eyes to see, 
and so read His name and glory on every- 
thing. We should perceive His heavenly 
lessons and with eyes lustrous with hope, 
longingly look for a happy hereafter, 
where the vision of bodies and minds and 
souls will be luminous forever. We 
should see Christmas rightly, love truly 
Him whose natal day it is, and correctly 
learn from Him the sublime lessons of 
Faith, Hope and Charity. 



CHRISTMAS AND THE LITTLE ONES. 33 




IX. 

CHRISTMAS AND THE LITTLE 
ONES. 

[HE feast of Christmas is the great 
feast for the children. Around 
the Babe group the babies. With 
wonderment they encircle the manger, be- 
hold the infant Christ, and look again and 
marvel again when the story of His 
Divinity is told. To think that such help- 
lessness is associated with omnipotence, 
such smallness of form coupled with 
eternal majesty, such babyishness with 
knowledge that sees through the souls of 
the onlookers, such annihilation with that 
creative power which made and holds in 
his hands the lamps of night that swing 
from the skies above the generations that 
are his creatures! All this makes the chil- 
dren of today ask questions that betoken 
how deeply the birth of Christ strikes 
the hearts and souls of innocence. 



34 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

How we should abhor the paganism 
that is ruthlessly making inroads on all 
our hallowed truths ! Pity the poor child 
that does not feel Christmas in its heart 
by being in Baptism a brother of the 
Holy One lying on Bethlehem's straw. 
Pity the parent whose impious life shuts 
out from his home the sacred truths of 
faith that had their birth in Christ's Na- 
tivity. And yet, what the evangelist said 
is still true; "He came unto His own and 
His own received Him not." 

There are many who would delight in 
obliterating the Christian era; who 
mourn for the days of barbarism; who 
hate the name of Christ and His Church 
and scowl at all His institutions ; who, 
professing piety, compromise Christ's 
truth; who sing not "Glory to God in the 
highest," but glory to the king of the pit 
by befouling earth with hellish deeds and 
diabolical principles. 

May the infant Christ keep our babies 
true children, sweetened in their manners 
by the reverence that the Christ Child 
instills and sanctified in their lives with 



CHRISTMAS AND THE LITTLE ONES. 35 

the tender, beautiful, and consistent 
truths that were born in Bethlehem, bred 
in Nazareth, gird the world, and live in 
eternity. 



36 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




CHRISTMAS BENEDICTION. 

|OW many of us, in spirit, have 
looked into the skies of Bethle- 
hem with their moon shepherd- 
ing the white stars, have heard the music 
and been thrilled by the magic of the 
sights and sounds mysterious. Many 
would wish to have knelt with the 
herdsmen and the Magi, and would 
have taken the little hand of The Baby 
and pressed it down on their heads for 
blessing. And yet are we not inconsis- 
tent? We have not to travel all the way 
to Judea for heavenly privileges! They 
are, like Wisdom in Holy Writ, seated 
at our thresholds. On the altar, Christ 
has His Bethlehem. In the Benediction 
of the Blessed Sacrament, the same dear 
hand that gave benizens to devotees is 
raised over the hearts, minds and souls 
of adorers. He blesses all in most gen- 



CHRISTMAS BENEDICTION. 37 

erous fashion — the poor fellow who 
skulks into a corner near the door and 
gives maybe only a periodical visit, and 
the ardent heart that throbs in unison 
with His Sacred Heart in Holy Com- 
munion. All receive the favor of our dear 
Lord, some, that vice may be everlastingly 
reprobated, others that goodness may be 
perpetually sustained. 

In the olden time, men went to Christ; 
in our blessed season, Christ comes to 
men. His love is diffusive. He is housed 
in many tabernacles and has in Benedic- 
tion the same light that lit the sky and 
cave in the Holy night, and now fills 
Heaven with majesty and glory. 

Bowing down heart and head before 
Him, let us ask the Christ to make strong 
the one and bright the other, so that we 
may not be of the crowd that merely ad- 
mires but does not emulate. 



38 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




XL 

OUR CHRISTMAS DUTY. 

GLANCE around the world 
shows us how we should draw 
nearer the Child Jesus in Bethle- 
hem. In France, atheism scorns Him; 
in England heresy deforms the doctrine 
of His personality and makes Him far 
different from the Divine reality; in 
America, Santa Claus is rapidly usurp- 
ing the Babe's throne in the children's 
affections, making the holy name of sacri- 
fice a term for greed. Distant and black 
lands never saw the white face of our 
glorious Divinity, the while our own 
white civilization has blackened the 
majesty of the Infant. 

At whose door then, will the blessed 
Mary knock, if not at ours? We are the 
beneficiaries of the Divine Child. No 
gift we craved had ever to be asked for 
twice, and every gift we get from Heaven 



OUR CHRISTMAS DUTY. 39 

is inestimable. Let us then not permit 
the indignity to the Blessed Mother of 
waiting beyond our gates, but let her en- 
ter and make a spiritual triumph in our 
hearts. Let Christ change them, wretched 
stables to tabernacles, making of our 
minds sanctuary lamps where true and 
holy light will shine, of our souls, all 
turbulent with worldly cares, a retreat 
wherein He may lay His head, as did 
He pillow it upon the breast of St. John 
at the Last Supper, to whisper us rest that 
will forecast peace and joy and glory 
everlasting. 




40 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

XII. 

CHRISTMAS KINDNESS. 

[NLY the devils have hatred in 
their hearts on Christmas morn- 
ing, for the glorious chant, 
"Peace on earth," never makes music for 
the damned. It behooves us, then, to 
keep far from hell and cling close to the 
Church that comforts and guides us. We 
anticipate the joys and graces of Christ- 
mas, as through Advent we are led thereto 
by the blessed angel of charity that will 
"prepare the way" before us. 

We should be kind to our neighbor so 
that the gentle Christ will know us when 
He comes. Kindness will not only help 
our souls, but help our health and even 
our looks; the man who smiles is the man 
who escapes biliousness or dyspepsia and 
wins where gloom fails. His face is as 
summer, whereas scorn makes winter. 
Frozen faces are the most rigid scenes for 
the very reason that we expect in the 



CHRISTMAS KINDNESS. il 

human countenance subtle and happy mo- 
bility. 

And how can we be kind when we 
have, nothing to bestow? There is none 
so poor who has not rich gifts for his fel- 
low. Take a simple word! Is there any- 
thing so cheap in the mouth of the 
speaker, so dear in the ear of the hearer? 
It costs nothing, for a word is breath, u a 
trifle thin as air," and yet a word can 
"knit the ravelled sleeve of care," can give 
comfort where medicine vainly seeks to 
bestow strength, courage where disaster 
would daunt, and, wonderful to say, can 
even save a soul. A word coming warm 
from the heart will be remembered when 
the dust of years is upon our faculties. 
Are not kind words for all of us the best 
gifts we ever received? Have not elegant 
letters withered? have not books been 
frayed? have not beauties, in the domain 
of art, crumbled? but over them all and 
through the wrecks of the years, does not 
the kind word come as lustrous as if 
spoken this hour, as hallowed as if it orig- 
inally winged its flight from heavenly 



42 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

courts and choristers? Deny not the kind 
word, blessed in itself and blessing in its 
influence, and which, costing nothing, 
brings for our fellow a world of rare de- 
lights! Deny not the kind word which 
is cognate in character to the song of the 
angels that awoke with its burst of 
heavenly harpipny sleeping night in 
Bethlehem! jTDeny not the charitable 
word which will bring more than the 
smile of Christ at Christmastide, as it will 
bring Christ Himself to make of our soul 
His home!-^J 

We should, in this gracious season, cul- 
tivate the habit of thinking well of others. 
It is a happy thing to see good, and not to 
be anxious to ferret evil. And there is 
much good in everyone. If we want to 
see wrong, let us look within and measure 
swords with it at close range; if we want 
to note good we will, little though it be, 
see more outside than within. Strange 
yet happy result, the saints were only 
miserable when they were face to face 
with self in contemplation. It is well 
for us all that we are mysteries to our- 



CHRISTMAS KINDNESS. 43 

selves or we would, as sings the psalmist, 
"perish in humility." Think well of your 
neighbor! and you will see him as you 
would desire him to be, for objects are 
ever clothed in the color of our spectacles, 
and we alas too often, mistake the subjec- 
tive for the objective. 

We should be kind in words, as a prep- 
aration for the Christ-Child's coming. 
We should give, especially to the poor. 
To give betokens true Christianity. Our 
idea of the great Creator is compassed in 
the thought of the Great Giver ; our love 
of Christ is kindled by the coals that 
burned the frankincense, itself a gift from 
royal hands to heavenly Royalty bestow- 
ing Itself. 

Kindness to the poor whom we see is 
the surest and best way of showing our 
love for Christ whom we do not see. To 
make Christmas an occasion to grasp 
everything and give nothing is pagan in 
its selfishness, and in no way Christian in 
its sacrifice. To dry a tear of suffering, 
to stifle a sigh of sorrow, to keep the little 
life in God's creature that starvation 



44 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

threatens, — these are the works that bring 
recognition from the Christ who came to 
give, until His gifts ended with Calvary 
where He clothed beggarly and poverty- 
stricken humanity in the royal purple of 
His blood. 

So, then, we would fain enlist our 
energies under the banner of the great 
precursor, St. John, and give a little 
homily on charity as a guide to the rich 
love of the Yuletide. It makes no differ- 
ence what gifts we receive if we do not 
make sure to get for ourselves the best 
Christmas blessing, the grace of that 
Christ whose love is so constant. Friends 
may prove false, and of them it may be 
true what poor Ophelia voiced when in 
anguish she said, 

) (C Rich gifts wax poor 
When givers prove unkind," — 

but Christ has never faltered in His love, 
though we have done our foolish best to 
provoke Him to the course. He has ever 
been tenderly devoted, from the time 
when His little wondering eyes opened on 
the queer scenes that greeted Him in 
Bethlehem. 



CHRIST, THE POOR AND THE CHILDREN. 45 




XIII. 

CHRIST, THE POOR, AND THE 
CHILDREN. 

jOT among the wealthy, with their 
well-stocked pantries, not with 
the comfortable, unused to 
omitted or delayed meals, but to the poor, 
the abandoned, or the orphaned, has 
Christmas its fullest significance. The 
dear Christ was for the poor, of the poor, 
and by the poor, and He delights to visit 
the poor. Where there is no flame on the 
hearthstone, He kindles one ; where there 
is no plenty, He makes with His gracious 
benignity, the starveling forget distress- 
ing want, where the sweets of life are ab- 
sent, He sits down and produces all the 
joys of hope. His gentle hand lovingly 
presses the rough palm of toil; His com- 
passionate eyes make the heart of pain 
forget its throb. His glory illumines the 



46 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

dark home of misery. All His life, Christ 
spent among the poor and afflicted; He 
was never a frequenter of the palace; the 
hut was always the goal of His pilgrim- 
age, and so, at Christmas time partic- 
ularly, is His presence felt in the orphan- 
age, in the home of distress, at the bedside 
of Suffering. 

Our dear Lord always enjoyed little 
children. Painters have them tumbling 
all over Him. His tender thought: "Suf- 
fer the little children to come unto Me," 
will ever endear Him to innocents. As the 
great strong man, as well as the Eternal 
God, Christ sympathized with juvenile 
cares, condescended to play with little 
ones, blessed the loving mothers and was 
in every truth, a child in His gentleness. 
So He comes, with His old affection, to 
the youth of today. The Christmas let- 
ter brings Him; the little postal card, 
with its picture of the Nativity, is His 
smile upon children; the gift is enriched 
with the dear name of Bethlehem's Babe. 

In pagan times, Jupiter thundering 
terrified creatures who were made to feel 



CHRIST, THE POOR AND THE CHILDREN. 47 

like purposeless toys of fate. In Jewish 
history, Jehovah was conceived as the 
powerful leader of armies. Now, a Child 
is the center of childish interest, and 
around the little one of Bethlehem the 
children are grouped, pointing out to 
each other the wonderful items of the 
tender story. His weakness is all so kin- 
dred to their own that they love Him as 
their little brother; where His majesty is 
stabled is so like their own poverty, that 
they compassionate Him; being neglected 
by the world He came to save, endears 
Him to their loving hearts that thrill 
with fervor as He shakes in cold. 

After the children go the parents, un- 
til around the manger throng thousands 
of devotees. How wonderful is it all! 
How strange the ways of God confound- 
ing all the pomp of a silly and conceited 
world. 

Most of all, now, owing to the solici- 
tude for children of our last great Pope, 
the little ones come nearer to our Lord 
than ever before. As reason is dawning 
on the hill-top of life, the children will, 



48 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

in the early morning of their years, offer 
their hearts to the Christ-Child. In Holy 
Communion, they will not only associate 
with their Divine Friend but house Him 
in their hearts and recompense Him for 
the denials of Bethlehem. Mfay Mary's 
dear and blessed infant be ever a joy to 
us all and a reminder of the Glory of that 
Kingdom where He is enthroned forever 
and forever. 




MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. id 

XIV. 

MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 

jETHLEHEM has so changed 
prophecy into fact that the 
prophet himself seems like a his- 
torian. Thousands of years before the 
Nativity, Isaias says: "For a child is born 
to us; and a son is given to us; and the 
Government is upon his shoulders; and 
his name shall be called, Wonderful." 

Who was this child of mystery and 
prophecy? God Almighty. Yes, God, 
whose smile is Heaven's bliss, whose 
frown is Hell's horror; God, whose ex- 
tended hand calmed chaos as, later on, it 
did Genezareth's troubled wave, and 
whose creative wish order and beauty 
instantly and joyfully obeyed; God, 
whose thoughts now come to the sky as a 
star, now to the earth as a flower and then 
drop to the depths of ocean as a pearl; 
God, whom the tyrannic Pharao feared 
and the sublime Moses worshipped, from 
whom Solomon took wisdom and Josue 



50 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

power, without whom humanity's mil- 
lions would not be, who rules the des- 
tinies of nations, and who finally will 
judge the generations without witness, 
without counsellor, without jury. 

Yes, well has prophecy and truly has 
fact called the Christ, Wonderful. This 
little infant, incapable of independent 
motion, is the God who moves the 
heavens. To this little mind is traceable 
all the divine designs made manifest in 
the workings of ages. This little head 
domes all the knowledge that spans every- 
thing from the Trinity to the number of 
insects that people the fullness of sum- 
mer. This little hand has traced the 
course of the stars far off in their unseen 
windings. This little half opened eye has 
seen that which Man's best imaginings 
can but negatively suggest. This tiny ear 
has heard the glorious chants of cherubim 
and seraphim, before commenced the 
music of the spheres, the first morning of 
creation. 

Yes, the Child born is indeed Wonder- 
ful. He is the God of Majesty, though, 



MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 51 

instead of the purple of Augustus, he is 
clothed in the coarse garments of the 
poor. He is the God of Eternity, though 
in time his infant breathings dampen one 
of the poorest places in this fair earth. He 
is the God of power, though now only 
humble shepherds acknowledge him 
King. He is the God of greatness, nar- 
rowed mysteriously to a little crib. He 
is the God of science, for Bethlehem has 
proved to be a school where was taught 
a better philosophy than Athens could 
boast — than Romans embodied in their 
lives — a school more lasting in its founda- 
tions and with more students at its shrine 
than Roman and Grecian together could 
count. 

Such and so is Christ's Divinity, which 
with His humanity, make one Divine per- 
son, for Christ is as mysteriously man as 
He is wonderfully God. He had a human 
heart, sensitive to the sorrows of man, for 
as one of us He felt kindred miseries — 
sensitive to love, for He loved His mother 
and mankind. He had a human body to 
feel the cold of the cave and the agony of 



52 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

the mountain. He had a human will to 
wish for better things. He had a human 
intellect capable of improvement at His 
humble craft of carpentry. He was a 
man, perfect in all the faculties of a man, 
but distinct in His humanity from His 
Divinity. 

So was Christ, God and man — not was 
He God alone, for His humanity was 
pronounced in affliction — not was He 
man alone, for His character was shown 
divine in miracle. 

Christmas then, should not be a season 
for unmortified and irreligious thought 
and deed, but a time when our hearts 
should grow bright in their charity as the 
coals that burned the eastern incense, — in 
their faith strong as the King's who 
swung their censor before the crib, — in 
their hope unfaltering as those who fol- 
lowed the constant star until its ray, as 
with a golden finger, pointed out the 
place where lay the King of angels and 
of men. 

Now what was the effect of Christmas 
in the world? Think on the grand work 



MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 53 

commenced in Bethlehem. Little did 
barbarism in its rock-built citadel dream 
on that cold December night, long years 
ago, that in a bleak field of Judea there 
was born a lamb, whose death would be 
its death. But so the sequel proved, for 
Christ came to destroy the empire of sin 
and barbarism had to be cast out, even as 
Ishmael from the tent of Abraham, to 
make way for the new heir. In so doing, 
Christ renewed the face of society, as 
paganism was brutal, bloody and beastly. 
Christ came, and glory to His name for- 
ever, all things were changed. Instead 
of Paganism with its proud cruel Caesar, 
wearing on his brow the diadem that a 
thousand regal crowns combined to 
fashion, and bearing in his hand the 
scepter of the world, we have the humil- 
ity and meekness of an apostle who ruled 
earth not by the power of arms but by the 
virtue of Christ — instead of man's lust, 
history proudly pens the brave mortifica- 
tions of the martyrs who flung their 
bodies to the arena rather than throw 
their chaste souls to the Devil — instead of 



54 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

hatred of enemies we have charity, in- 
stead of vengeance, generosity, briefly, to 
generalize, instead of men set on the earth 
and the earthly, we have them looking 
far beyond to a bright hereafter and 
beautifying their souls by saintly deeds 
to fit them for the eternal presence of all 
beauty and all sanctity. 

This is what Christ's birth has effected 
in the world, and for this we owe Him 
our brightest love, our best gratitude, our 
most sincere adoration. This is what 
Christ has done, and no one but Christ 
can do the gigantic work of the near fu- 
ture as of all time. Christ, the Prince of 
Peace, can alone bring rest to a weary, 
blood-bedaubed world. No one knows 
when the most awful war of all time will 
end, but this is known, as Christ is known, 
that only the babe of Bethlehem can now, 
as on the Galilean Sea, whisper peace. 
Even statesmen of the world pronounce 
this. Channing, in one of his masterpieces 
of Oratory, declared that "war will never 
yield but to the principles of universal 
justice and love, and these have no sure 



MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 55 

root but in the Religion of Jesus Christ." 
Here, in passing, we might add how the 
American orator of the past and the Pope 
of the present are in accord, and how both 
agree with the dictum of Benjamin 
Franklin that "there never was a good 
war or a bad peace." The devastating 
campaigns of Europe do not rhyme with 
the sentiment of Homer : "The chance of 
war is equal and the slayer oft is slain," 
for it is no longer as Roderick Dhu in 
Scott's martial story has it: 

"Man to man and steel to steel 

A foemans vengeance thou shalt feel!" 

War now is the farthest possible thing 
from the feats of bravery that made the 
ages of chivalry almost picturesque. War 
now is the turning of the crank of a mur- 
der machine so, while the trenches may 
crush combatants, they can never make 
heroes. 

No wonder that the Father of Christen- 
dom begs for peace from the Babe of 
Bethlehem, for more than the loss of 
lives, terrible in its millions as this is, 
more than the destruction of grand cathe- 



56 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

drals whose sweeping lines copy the skies 
bending over them, more than the waste 
of cities razed to the ground, more than 
the broken hearts that groan their Kyrie 
Eleisons in this gracious season, more 
than the starvation and the want making 
desolate communities once happily fed 
from the bounty of generous nature, more 
then all this is the loss to Bethlehem's 
Babe of the souls He came to save. No 
one certainly will hold that, even though 
the massacre is legalized, the place to pre- 
pare for Eternity is while men are strenu- 
ously engaged in killing each other. If 
war is Hell, said of a less cruel time than 
now, how can dying men pray therein and 
fit their souls for God's judgment. To 
pray is to think, and men cannot think of 
eternal interests in the horrible distrac- 
tions of battle. Prayer without thought is 
a bubble that never reaches Heaven for 
it bursts in the air that envelops earth. 

War is largely the result of giving to 
the nation what belongs to Bethlehem, a 
sort of idolatry of country, hypernation- 
alism. Patriotism is an obligation of Re- 



MARS AND THE CHRIST CHILD. 57 

ligion but patriotism should not ascend to 
f etichism on the one side no more than de- 
scend to betrayal on the other. The Babe 
has first place, and this compliment to 
Christ is not an insult to country but its 
first best blessing. 

Oh, may the trumpeting angels that 
awoke the shepherds in the olden time 
make music in the smoking skies of Eu- 
rope and silence the bugle calling men to 
slaughter! Oh may the little Babe lead 
the nations from carnage to kindly 
thought! Oh may the cannon of cruelty 
be silenced and, in the calm created, may 
the gentle accents of peace be heard — 
that peace which in the time of Christ's 
coming, locked even the pagan temple of 
Janus in Rome and sang its song over the 
hills of Judea and in the field where 
Eternal Gentleness was born. May we 
soon be able to say with Longfellow : 

''Peace! and no longer from its brazen 
portals 
The blast of wars great organ shakes 
the skies , 
And beautiful as songs of the immortals 
The holy melodies of love arise" 



58 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

May the peace that Christ breathed in 
Bethlehem as well as in the horrors of 
Calvary make Americans brothers every- 
one, loving their country and the sacred 
privileges of liberty with the sweetness 
of the Christ, by cherishing faith in Him 
who alone gives Christmas its reasons 
and is parent to its joy. May the Christ 
Child be again pronounced "Wonder- 
ful," by bringing men from brutal Mars 
to peace, smiling in the charity and con- 
cord of Christmas. 



CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 59 




XV. 

CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 

jHEN the angels from Heaven's 
high court awoke the shepherds 
with their radiance, that antici- 
pated the morning, and with their song, 
so wonderful in voice and sentiment, 
mankind's mind was drawn not only to a 
consideration of the subject of the glad 
messengers, but to the thought of the 
happy visitors themselves. 

Angels were not strangers to this sad 
earth. They were here before on grand 
errands. Our desolate first parents en- 
countered one; Abraham entertained 
them in his tent; by one the Virgin 
Mother of the Christ was saluted rever- 
entially. Attendants on the throne of the 
Most High, they brought divine dis- 
patches from our God, and when angels 
delivered their words, unlike the great- 



60 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

est authors' works, they became imperish- 
able messages to the generations. 

"Glory to God in the highest," sang 
they on Judea's hills, and so from the 
sacred mounts, our altars, still come the 
same voices in the Gloria of the Mass. 
The poor, too, are there to hear the glad 
tones and take heart, as did the night- 
watchers of old ; while the rich are taught 
as were the Eastern Kings, that virtue is 
the true jewel and faith alone lights to the 
skies. 

"Glory to God in the highest" glory 
for giving us His Son, who came to teach 
an ignorant world, to direct its destiny, to 
inspire its hope, to enrich it with grace, 
to endow it with worth, to lead it from 
its erring course to the Heaven for which 
its creatures were intended. Poor, Christ 
came, for He wanted nothing from the 
world, but the world needed and got 
everything from Him; charitable He 
came, to give and not to take; for He had 
not the obligation of saying "thank you," 
to any earthly host; humble, He came, for 
pride had already parented sin and He 



CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 61 

would have none of its nonsense or its 
pomp. Glory to His name! All we can 
give is the uplifting word, for He has in 
Himself all power, all majesty, all per- 
fection, all illimitable happiness. 

"On earth peace to men of good will," 
Men of bad will belong not to Christ but 
to His enemy; they are outlaws, who de- 
serve not the blessings of peace, who 
merit not the benisens of hope. With the 
angels, we repeat the blessed words, love 
for the men of good will and pity for him 
who has formally subtracted himself from 
the ranks of the blessed. We rejoice with 
the choirs of earth, in the household of 
the faith and with the poor fellow who 
mistakes falsehood for truth, and, never 
doubting his position, does his best, for 
he too, as theologians tell us, if baptized, 
belongs to Christ's Kingdom. 

Christmas gives every true or good 
man a "Sursum Corda," by uplifting his 
hope and with it his heart, to the gener- 
ous and solicitous Christ. 

Joining the heavenly outburst in the 
Mass, we sing with minds assured of 



62 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

Christ's care, and hearts encouraged by 
His love, "We praise Thee; we bless 
Thee; we adore Thee; we glorify Thee; 
we give Thee thanks for Thy great 
glory." "We praise Thee/' for Christ 
alone is perfect excellence. "We bless 
Thee/' for all our gifts at Christmastide 
and in every hour of every season, are 
from His bounty. "We adore Thee," 
for the helpless Babe of Bethlehem is 
identical with the God of Eternity, and 
all our powers, His gifts, should be pros- 
trated before our Redeemer, our God and 
our All. "We glorify Thee," for who 
has given us life but God, who has pre- 
served us but God, who has enriched us 
but God ; who has Heaven to bestow but 
God? "We give Thee thanks for thy 
great glory," for we could not subtract 
from Thy glory, if our malice would try; 
no more than we could add, if our virtue 
would attempt, for Thou art immeasur- 
able in Thy magnificence, and we are 
only little atoms on the molehill of one 
of Thy innumerable worlds. 

To all well meaning Christians, then a 



CHRISTMAS ANGELS. 63 

happy Christmas in the words of the 
Christmas angels — to the poor who have 
little that Christ may grant them His 
love, which will make them poor no 
longer; to the rich that they may extend 
charity to the poor, and not shut their 
hearts against Christian sympathy and 
solicitude — to both, a flooding of the soul 
with all the melody, the joy, the hope, 
and the glory that is in the Christmas 
Angel's Song. 



64 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




XVI. 
CHRISTMAS IN ART. 

R. KEPPEL has made a beautiful 
collection of pictures of the na- 
tivity, entitled "Christmas in 
Art/' in which figure some exquisite 
things from Durer and Rembrandt. For 
this we should be grateful, as the collec- 
tion will do much to offset the heretical 
and foolish nothings that are carted to 
the stores as presents for Christmas. In 
commenting on the Nuremberg build- 
ings that figure in Durer's works, instead 
of the Palestine backgrounds that might 
be supposed to be subjects for the Mas- 
ter's brush, Mr. Keppel seems to apol- 
ogize for the artist. Now there is no rea- 
son in Durer's choice for even a smile. 
Who knew better than the master him- 
self what he was painting? Surely if he 
could build up the homes and streets of 
Nuremberg in his great creations he 



CHRISTMAS IN ART. 65 

would find no difficulty in raising the 
stately antiquities of the Land of Promise. 
We will, then, interest ourselves not with 
the fact, but with its reason. 

The masters of the olden time were 
everyone Evangelists, using the brush or 
chisel instead of the stylus or pen. They 
appealed to the devotion of the people 
through truth, and from their works they 
removed all distractions that would di- 
vert their attention from the main pur- 
pose of their pious pictures. They sought 
to make onlookers behold only the scene 
that uplifted faith. They cared not for 
the trappings and accidentals; substance 
was the quest of their brush. 

If the eyes of the Babe were all lumin- 
ous with love, his form all wondrous with 
Divinity, their work to them was well 
done. Stone walls of this or that char- 
acter did not enter into their calculations, 
save to bring forward the theme upon 
which their genius worked and prayed. 
Durer painted familiar views in his 
backgrounds so that there would be no 
distractions to the mind that dwelt on the 



66 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

great central scene. There was nothing 
new in the still life, only the familiar ob- 
jects of every day; and so the thought and 
feeling of the reverent remained in un- 
disturbed wonder on the actors of the 
mighty drama. 

Masters, like Durer and Rembrandt, 
painted their prayers and for the prayer- 
ful. The man of prayer has no eyes for 
the background ; only the foreground has 
charms which the environment of the pic- 
ture did not dispute, and hence every- 
thing that tends to rivet attention on the 
main purpose of the artist is a help to the 
sublime and heavenly scheme of the can- 
vas. Strange scenes and exceptional 
streets would be sins against the attention 
that prayer requires and would no better 
express the triumphant genius of the 
artist's towering mind, for the man who 
can make one landscape can just as easily 
fashion another. This, we believe to be 
the great reason of homelike grounds in 
Bethlehem's wonderful story, as the effort 
to have it otherwise would be no help to 
the artist's fame and might have a de- 



CHRISTMAS IN ART. 67 

pressing effect on the painting's high pur- 
pose. 

Mr. Keppel truly declares, "as in the 
case of ecclesiastical architecture and 
sculpture, the finest pictures are those 
produced in centuries past and not 
those of our own too sophisticated 
day." And why? Because the past 
held the ages of faith, when truth 
was worshipped in Religion and sought 
in every department of mind, un- 
like our conceited time, when art is 
ruined by the mercenary spirit that works 
for money and makes no grand sacrifices 
to truth to show devotion thereto. Heresy 
began as an iconoclast and has since 
wrecked genius in preferring the profane 
or pagan subject to the inspirations that 
were in color or form ecstatic pronounc- 
ments of the principles of Christianity's 
Creed. Shifting scenes are not subjects 
for the steady mind of genius, and so 
heresy has discouraged religion's art and 
encouraged in the same degree the 
world's frivolities. Art is poetry, and 
heresy's stock in the world market is 



68 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

mathematical prose that makes the hard 
lines of reason the yard-stick wherewith 
everything in heaven and on earth is 
measured. 

Only religion can inspire a Christian 
classic for the reason that religion is 
truth, and truth on and off the canvas, 
appeals eloquently to eye and mind. One 
cannot have truth in art and falsehood in 
faith, for what is true in religion must be 
true in every department of intellect. 
This is why only Christian masterpieces 
are the priceless inheritance of history, 
and this is why Mr. Keppel's declaration 
is orthodox. 



CHRISTMAS LONELINESS. 




XVII. 

CHRISTMAS LONELINESS. 

HE greatest foe to the happiness 
universally wished in this graci- 
ous season is loneliness. Friends 
may fill the cornucopia with rich gifts of 
heart and hand ; they may bestow nature's 
blessing in color schemes of fruit and 
flower, and yet the absence of one dear 
soul mutilates the picture with a sharp 
shadow. There is one voice away from 
the chorus that spoils the melody of 
kindly words. An absence there is that 
outweighs the joys of generosity. Music 
fails to distract, for its minor key has a 
tearful pathos, while eloquence, with its 
soulful longings, brings the mind to 
heaven's glory, but on the way fancy 
visits its friend. Even in prayer, a van- 
ished face will peep in on our pieties. 

Strange that in this great world, with 
its swarming myriads, so similar in na- 



70 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

tural characteristics, there is for every 
man or woman, old or young, one heart 
that is dearest, some one mind that en- 
kindles fervor, some one soul that is kin- 
dred with whom we make glad holiday. 
Yet, so it is, and there is little comfort in 
the thought that only kind hearts deeply 
feel, for they are often well nigh smoth- 
ered in the desolation they themselves 
create in brooding on the past and the ab- 
sent. 

Well, in the eternal holiday above, our 
smiles will never be a disguise for tears 
and our memories will not be veiled in 
mist. 



CHRISTMAS SINS. 71 




XVIII. 

CHRISTMAS SINS. 

|T all times, sin is to be hated as the 
product of Hell and a dismal 
guide thither, but never does it 
appear more atrocious than in the graci- 
ous time when the Innocent and Beauti- 
ful thrilled earth and sky with His Na- 
tivity. 

Is there anything so jarring to the ear 
as a shot from a revolver Christmas morn- 
ing? What a contradiction to the peace 
that the birth of our Lord betokened! 
And yet how many smoking guns tell of 
bloody murder in lands blessed by faith 
in Him Who came as the Messenger of 
Peace and was heralded by gentle angels. 
The watchfulness of the Galilean 
shepherds is a far cry from the drunken- 
ness that mars the mind and kills the 
souls of men, for whose salvation all the 
wonders of Bethlehem were wrought. 



72 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

Still drunkenness degrades our time and 
men give their stomachs a higher consid- 
eration than their heads. The whole 
meaning of Christmas is lost to the glut- 
tonous appetite of him who mumbles 
idiotic jargon instead of gracious prayers 
— who joins his voice to the clanging 
terrors of Hell instead of blending his 
hymns of hope with the songs of Christ- 
mas. 

The paganism of our time pushes 
against the piety of devotees and pro- 
claims Christmas whiskey as one of its 
awful wares. So the very name of Christ- 
mas is prostituted from its heavenly 
dignity by devils in human guise, and is 
made an adjective to qualify the very 
sources of sin. 

Selfishness of all kinds, and sin is al- 
ways selfish, is entirely outside the pur- 
pose and aims of Christmas, which is a 
grand expression of sacrifice, for 
"Christ," says St. Paul, "annihilated 
Himself, taking the form of a servant," 
when He came to Bethlehem of Judea. 




WELCOME THE NEW BORN YEAR. 73 

XIX. 

WELCOME THE NEWBORN 
YEAR. 

ITH its resolves and its hopes, 
New Year comes. Happy is he 
who tempers the poetry of en- 
thusiasm with the philosophy of his his- 
tory, not dwelling morosely on past de- 
linquencies nor too sanguinely on future 
anticipations. Nor should the sorrows of 
the past, while steadying our hearts, be 
permitted to throw their long shadows 
into the future's sunny vale. Let us make 
the year new and not have it the fac- 
simile of the old — new in life, new in 
character, new in work, remembering 
that the more we depart from the old and 
realize the new the better it will be for 
us all. 

The old has had its day and brought 
us little measure of virtue. We have 
cheated ou r selves in cheating it. *T^55pi4e~ 
{he joys oT faith, the light of heavenly 



74 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

laws, the unerring guidance of the 
Church the monarch of the ages, we have 
been as the commonalty around us — 
measuring ourselves by their standards 
and not by the exalted criterions of 
Christ's gospel. Let us leave all this with 
little regret, and with grand hope salute 
the rising morning. The God who gave 
us the year will not throw us as straws 
on the crest of life's wave, but will give 
us the means of progress, and there is no 
progress if not toward the God who creat- 
ed us, who bestowed the consciousness of 
immortality, and the hope of heaven. 
The past year is a cemetery filled with the 
/bones of onetime strong purposes; filled 
with pet schemes that sickened in irreso- 
lution and died before the will compassed 
them; filled with dead days that had no 
pith nor purpose for the worthy here and 
the salutary hereafter. Over it all could 
be written an epitaph, for through it all 
never went a hosanna. 

Memory, then, brings regrets, but let 
us not mope. We are on earth yet, and 
that very thing should buoy us up with 



WELCOME THE NEW BORN YEAR. 75 

new courage, for every hour is a new 
creation with God's cherished purpose 
persevering in it, reminding us every 
hour of our destiny, animating us every 
hour to its realization, and dominating 
us every hour, despite our stiff perverse- 
ness. Notwithstanding, then, the somber 
colorings of memory and the sorry 
twinges of regret, let us step to the fu- 
ture with confidence and joy. Let us give 
our hand to the all-wise Father who 
leads us by His hand, gentle yet strong. 
As the bell tolls for the past, let us not 
fear the sorrow that the coming year may 
bring. 

We will never have true joy until life's 
puzzle is explained to us by religion's 
cheery mind. The more religious light 
shines for us on life, the more satisfaction 
life itself will give. Forget, then, all 
ugly things that deform, or, if remember- 
ing, blot them out by penance. Enjoy 
life by enjoying the new year! Enjoy the 
new year in adoring Him who gave life, 
grace to enrich it, and glory as its prom- 
ised crown! 



76 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




XX. 

NEW YEAR GREETING. 

T seems like irony or a cruel jest, 
in these terrible days of war, to 
wish our neighbors a happy New 
Year. How can men be merry or hearts 
be happy when Hatred and Sin and 
Death are so busy in the world? Yet is 
there hope of better things, of brighter 
days to come, of a more heavenly reign 
of justice and mercy and righteousness 
on earth, of divine comfort and sweet as- 
surance to the doubting and the fearful 
in the words once spoken by our Blessed 
Lord to one of His favored servants: "I 
am come to cast fire on the earth, and 
what will I but that it be kindled ?" That 
heavenly fire is the fire of love, of peace 
and law and brotherly concord, not the 
devasting conflagration of war and hat- 
red. 

But alas! man is prone to evil, and to- 



NEW YEAR GREETING. 77 

day the world has forgotten the Prince of 
Peace wrapped in swaddling clothes and 
laid in a manger. The nations of Europe 
have drawn the sword of death, and the 
song of the angels — "Glory to God in the 
highest and peace on earth to men of good 
will!" — is drowned by the voice of battle, 
lost in the harsh roar of guns, where 
brother faces brother in murderous mood. 
Yet shall the fire of love be enkindled 
on earth and the flames of war be ex- 
tinguished and utterly cease, for God is 
not mocked. His ways are inscrutable 
ways and His providence beyond the ken 
of man. But of this let us rest assured; 
out of all this misery of broken hearts 
and desolated homes shall come at length 
the "truce of God," that shall be not an 
idle figure of speech but a sweet reality 
in the hearts of men and nations. Through 
all this blood and slaughter, God is work- 
ing out benign ends for the world. He is 
opening the eyes of men to the folly of 
war and hatred, and to the wisdom of 
peace and love. Out of the chaos of these 



78 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

terrible days His mercy will yet evolve a 
new reign of celestial order on earth. 

Because this is so, because this is the 
faith of all who know that "God's in His 
heaven," and that, despite present ruin 
and devastation, "all's well with the 
world," confidently looking for the better 
days to come, with a sure hope in the ful- 
fillment of His love, we may wish one an- 
other a Happy New Year. 




NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. 79 

XXI. 

NEW YEAR'S GRATITUDE. 

NOTHER year from out Time's 
vast ocean has broken its waves 
on the shore of eternity, bearing 
on to its God black hulks as well as white 
sails — souls lost forever as well as souls 
gained forever. And now that we have 
heard the bell toll for the old year that 
has gone and that happy and hopeful we 
enter on the new, we are forcibly remind- 
ed of the fact that life and death are side 
by side, even as the last moment of one 
year touches the first second of the other. 
We are impressed with the thought that 
the bell will one day solemnly tell our fel- 
lows that we, too, have gone. It behooves 
us, then, while life is ours to use time in 
the service of the God of time, to begin 
the new year with new resolves that will 
preface a new life, so that one day the 
blessings of grace may be happily blended 
in the delights of glory. 



80 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

And here we would fain guess what the 
future will reveal. The future will be 
the fac-simile of the past in everything, 
save the changes we ourselves make. 
Trusting, as ever, on God's generosity, 
we hope to get the time to make the need- 
ed change. 

Time, how precious! Time, the price 
of eternity! Time, in thirty-three years 
of which our dear Lord taught and saved 
the generations of mankind! Time, in 
which saints wrought the golden deeds 
for which God girt their temples with 
ever-green chaplets! Time, the day of 
God's mercy, mercy so great, indeed, that 
it seemingly contradicts divine justice! 
Time, which, if once spent well, will gain 
us heaven! Time, which, were it possi- 
ble to spend twice, would undo hell. 

Have you ever thought how a soul, 
now lost in the dungeons of the damned, 
would act were it allowed to come to 
earth to live again and hope for a period? 
It would never return to its anguish so 
intense would be the virtue of its short 
life — a life which would in its intensity 



NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. 81 

equal here the lustre of the glorified be- 
yond. 

How, then, will we spend our time 
well? By thanking God for the past, by 
noting its faults and by begging His 
blessing on the future. The past is one 
continued pearl string of God's charities, 
and it befits us to sing in the transports of 
Isaias: "I will remember the tender 
mercies of the Lord, the praise of the 
Lord for all the things that the Lord 
hath bestowed upon me." 

What has He bestowed? Life and all 
the blessings of nature and grace; Life, 
for every year is a new creation, since 
preservation in life is a continued act of 
creation. Life is the principle of all 
happiness. Without life, we could not 
actually enjoy anything, nor could we 
hope for possible joys. It gives light to 
the eye, causing it to recognize beauty 
pillowed on the snows of winter or re- 
clining on the young arm of Spring. It 
gives the ear the power to charm the soul 
with that harmony which swells the 
throat of the little bird or pulsates in the 



82 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

pipes of the organ thundering reverence 
to God. It gives the power of speech, 
which makes earth echo with kind words 
and sweet songs. Of all this is life the 
parent, and the father of life is God. 

God had given us Nature. For us he 
surrounds the seed with mystery, causing 
it to burst the sod and sprout forth in 
green loveliness. He rears its head and 
with his unseen power props the grain- 
laden stem. He makes of Autumn a 
mighty storehouse, wherein are packed 
rich products for his myriads of crea- 
tures. He gives us flocks, as he gave 
Abraham, and when our faith fails us in 
Him, as Nature's God, He gently chides 
us, saying, "Oh ye of little faith," your 
life to Me is dearer than the lily, your 
soul more fair. 

Grace gives the highest reason for 
thanks. Here we are urged by Christ to 
sanctity and Heaven. God is kinder to 
us than we are to ourselves. He has made 
us Christians, when so many men, abom- 
inable as is the stone they worship, pray 
to idols. He has made us true Christians 



NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. 83 

possessing not man's changing ideas, but 
thoughts fixed and unchangeable from 
God Himself. He has given us the sacra- 
ments which the wealth of the universe 
could not buy, since they cost the wealth 
of the heart of the world's God. So We 
should be generous, as divine prodigality 
certainly should beget human generosity. 

To give our thankfulness the character 
of true logic, we should note our ingrati- 
tude. You may say you confessed it. 
In what have we been derelict? Con- 
science will answer, as truly it is written, 
"Conscience is the test of every mind." 

Perseverence is a great desideratum. 
A want of perseverance makes the dying 
man a torture to himself and a dread to 
those who look into his eyes as hopeless 
of heaven as of bodily strength. Persever- 
ence gives the face a smile in which pain 
is drowned, gives the eye a quiet content 
which betokens a close view of heaven. 
Then let us endeavor to make this Chris- 
tian year truly a year of grace and so 
make it the dawn of the new and eternal 
year of God Himself. 



84 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




XXII. 
THE USE OF TIME. 

|EW YEAR'S, with all its joys, 
sorrows, hopes and fears with all 
the revelations of the old year 
and all the lessons that experience therein 
pronounced, comes again. Maybe stunned 
with grief, amazed at disaster, or mayhap 
bright with delight and hopeful in suc- 
cess, you meet the new year's morning. 
Whatever earthly loss or failure may be 
yours, there is one thing you will remem- 
ber, and that is that there is no true 
anguish but sin — that, no matter what 
pleasure lures you, there is no real joy 
save that which virtue parents. Grief, 
and all earthly mishaps will not freeze on 
a heart suffused with the light and 
warmth of heavenly hope, will not trou- 
ble the great depths of a mind steadied 
with Christian principles, will not drop 
as leaden weights to weary, into soul rich 



NEW YEAR GRATITUDE. $5 

in grace that happily heralds glory. Nor 
will success intoxicate the Christian who 
estimates everything, not by life's transi- 
ent year, but by God's eternal day. 

We all pray for time. Let us use it! It 
is an inestimable gift. How much we 
can learn in its golden round! What 
books can be read and studied! What 
songs can be sung! What good work 
done! What great deed accomplished! 
What prayers can be said uplifting us 
heavenward to think on something more 
than the stars and the sun — the good God 
who decks night with the signet rings of 
His creative hand and enriches our work- 
ing hours with the beauty and power of 
His solar light! What knowledge of 
Christ we can gain in the hours His 
mercy bestows ! What a banquet we may 
enjoy at God's altar, where we can, in a 
measure, make our Lord's strength our 
strength, our Lord's blood our blood, our 
Lord's body our body, so that the health 
faith gives may make our souls strong, 
the brightness it yields may light our 
minds, the beauty it bestows may be the 



86 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

decoration as well as the force of exalted 
character. 

Time gives us all these opportunities. 

Let us find hours for useful and de- 
lightful pursuits, by wasting none. Let 
us ask ourselves every day what did we 
so that our days will not be corpses strewn 
along life's highway! Let us examine our 
conscience and see what idea, refining or 
heavenly, we added to the honeycomb of 
thought! What development gave we 
the heart? What nourishment the soul? 
What sacraments have we cherished as 
more than angelic visitors? What work 
have we done to bless the day withal, so 
that its light may not have shone in dark- 
ness? 

These salutary questions will not 
fatigue but strengthen, will not beget 
melancholy but joy, will not be foolish 
but wise, and will remind us of the fact 
that we are made not for our own pur- 
poses but for God's grand intents, that we 
are not fashioned as victims of an idle 
fatality, but are unerringly destined for 
immortal bliss, that we are not purpose- 



THE USE OF TIME. 87 

less accidents, but creatures of heavenly 
design, that we are not part of the mud we 
step on, but are kindred to Christ, bene- 
ficiaries of His bounty and heirs of His 
glory. 

Time will end; eternity, never; let us 
appreciate the one as the preparation for 
the other. 

And yet when we think how we sweat 
for Caesar and how seldom we have a 
moist brow for Christ we feel how un- 
worthy we are of time and all its benizens 
and hopes. We will then begin the New 
Year with an act of contrition, continue it 
with an act of love, end it, if it is yet ours, 
with an act of hope, and over all, and 
through all, let faith shed its lustre and 
thrill with its power. 



STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




XXIII. 

THE NEW YEAR'S VALUE. 

lOW valuable is time! A second 
in a Derby may bring fortune or 
lose fame. Yet in the great con- 
test for immortality we trifle with dear 
hours, with dearer days, with dearest 
years. 

Through the proper use of time, the 
wonders of the world, the marvels of art 
and science, the splendors of literature, 
have been wrought. Nevertheless, we 
foolishly sit waiting for tomorrow to 
bring us a boon, and do not see that we 
are overlooking one, in gazing beyond the 
present hour, rich in abundant possibili- 
ties. 

The worth of life is inestimable. We 
should then act "in the living present,'' 
for life is action. We should not rot in 
the face of the sun, but let it gild our la- 
bors that should themselves be glories that 



THE NEW YEAR'S VALUE. 69 

would outlive the sun in their immortal 
characters and destinies. Let us live well 
and so multiply our years, for one who 
"well lives, long lives." 

When we think that the dying Chris- i 
tian can be saved, while his life goes out 
under the wheels of a train, if he only says 
from the heart, "the Lord have mercy on 
me," we can esteem the worth of a mo- 
ment. When we consider that a few \ 
years fashioned a Stanislaus Kostka, we I 
can appreciate the mighty value of our \ 
days. When we contemplate the fact that 
our own time is the price of everlasting 
happiness, we feel like hurrying, as did 
St. Paul, to "redeem the time," and to 
make up to the future what our sorry past 
lacked. 

Approaching the new year, we guess at 
what changes it will work in our lives. 
Looking at the past and the present, we 
have all reason to fear that the future will 
be kindred thereto — that, as Coleridge 
says in the Death of Wallenstein "I n to 
da y already walks tomorrow." ,_ 

o God alone we must look for that im 



90 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

provement in spiritual health that will 
save our lives from being one long dis- 
ease. From God alone, and not from our 
own efforts, we must seek that gracious 
favor that will make our days a promise 
of the eternal years. Before God alone 
we must kneel for perseverence so that 
our eyes, fading in death, may see Para- 
dise closer than did Moses, Palestine, 
viewed from the brow of Horeb. 

The older a man lives, the less faith 
should he have in man and correspond- 
ingly the more in his God. The world 
has betrayed its every declaration; God 
has kept his multitudinous promises. We 
should serve with fruitful time the One, 
and eschew the other as a cheat and a liar. 
The present moment is ours; the next is 
God's; let us make this rich in merit so 
that w r e can bargain truly for the other, 
for the best way to get a second gift is to 
appreciate and use well the first. 

Let us not permit sin to eclipse our sun 
and blot out our day, but let every hour 
be a gracious one that makes for Heaven 
in its fine sense and purpose. Time is the 



THE NEW YEAR'S VALUE. 91 

porch of ete rnity./ It is more, for of it is 
the verse ot Y oung in "Night Thoughts" 
too true : 

"Time is eternity; 

Pregnant with all eternity can give; 

Pregnant with all that makes arch-angels 

smile 
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth 
A power ethereal, only not adorn d" 

May we daily learn that there is noth- 
ing true but Heaven and none like unto 
God, its King. May we ever learn that 
time was given us solely to acquire truth 
and light its deeds through earth's dark- 
ness to eternity. So doing, our lives will 
be prayers that will ensure a truly happy 
New Year. 



92 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




XXIV. 
GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 

ANY men, remembering the 
broken resolves of last year, will 
smile at others and themselves, 
when it is a question of registering resolu- 
tions for the New Year. 

Now, this is all wrong. Good intentions 
have lapsed, it is true, and may again fall 
short of realization, but this is no reason 
why they should not be made. Life it- 
self consists of up and downs — of acts of 
contrition as well as of hope. We should 
not discount ourselves any more than we 
should depreciate our fellows. A good 
resolve, in itself, is a good deed. It is a 
shame to break faith with our promises, 
but it is a greater shame not to even at- 
tempt to be better, by being guilty of lazi- 
ness, to the extent of not even dreaming 
of higher things. 

Our resolutions are broken, not be- 



GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 93 

cause of themselves but because of the 
weakness of human nature. The man who 
would undo advancement by not com- 
mencing with a resolution would lay the 
axe to the root of the efficiency of pen- 
ance. Is not every confession largely a 
declaration of broken promises, of lapses 
into sin, or omissions of virtuous works? 
The sacrament's efficacy is not to be im- 
peached for the wretchedness it undoes 
and the encouragement it bestows ; so the 
penitent's confession is not to be consid- 
ered false because he fails again. He re- 
solved because of strength; he failed be- 
cause of weakness. We may fail even 
though we resolve ; we will never succeed 
if we omit resolution. The man who re- 
solves has courage ; the man who does not 
is an unqualified coward. The man who 
resolves has faith, for he believes in God 
and trusts Him. Cicero anticipated 
Christian truth when he declared in his 
Tusculan Disputations, "A man of cour- 
age is also full of faith." Courage, then, 
should brighten the new year with its in- 
teresting glow. The exquisite lines of 



94 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

Farquhar should stimulate our new en- 
deavors : 

Courage, the highest gift that scorns to 
bend 

To mean devices for a sordid end. 

Courage, an independent spark from 
heaven s bright throne, 

By which the soul stands raised, triumph- 
ant, high, alone. 

Great in itself, not praises of the crowd, 

Above all vice, it stoops not to be proud. 

Courage, the mighty attribute of powers 
above, 

By which those great in war are great in 
love. 

The spring of all brave acts is seated here, 

As falsehoods draw their sordid births 
from fear. 

Let us resolve, then, and resolve so 
grandly that the practical conclusions of 
our resolutions will come as the necessary 
sequence of our ardent purpose. 

Our wills, 'tis true, are weak, but God 
is strong, and if we couple our endeavors 
with His desires we need not fear the 
aftermath. God has given us the New 
Year; let us dedicate it to Him who gives 
"the increase;" the devil has already 
robbed God's Kingdom of too many souls 
for us to add to the awful disaster. To 



GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 95 

the Christ, who is as harshly treated now 
as was He in the olden time by the inn- 
keepers of Bethlehem, we offer not 
swords for they were never acceptable to 
the meek Lord, but our resolutions that 
He may consecrate them and perfect 
them. The greatest honor is the proud 
title of defender of the faith, in an age 
which, like the Greeks of old, impiously 
deems Christ a stumbling block and 
Christianity itself a scandal. 



STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 




XXV. 
LITTLE CHRISTMAS. 

jOW "stale, flat and unprofitable" 
are the ways of this world can be 
gleaned, even through hurried re- 
flection, from a consideration of Epipha- 
ny. Read all the follies of the dailies and 
then think how they pale into insignifi- 
cance before the details of an event that 
happened two thousand years ago. The 
commemoration of the Kings' visit to 
Bethlehem's crib engages our hearts at- 
tention, while the record of the living day 
inspires only the mind's passing notice. 

Such a thought as this made Lew Wal- 
lace not fear that his chapter in "Ben- 
Hur" on the journey of the Wise Men, 
would hold the modern reader when 
crude themes of our times make him look 
away. 

No wonder the sublime prophet 
heralded Epiphany with the glorious 



GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 97 

words: "Arise! be enlightened, O Jerusa- 
lem; for thy light is come and the glory 
of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, be- 
hold, darkness shall cover the earth and 
a mist the people ; but the Lord shall arise 
upon thee and His glory shall be seen 
upon thee. And the Gentiles shall walk 
in thy light, and kings in the brightness 
of thy rising." 

The star that led the royal pilgrimage 
to the Judean stable is symbolical of all 
this light that Isaias in rhapsody foresaw. 
It gleamed through the mist of expect- 
ancy; it shone through the darkness of ig- 
norance, and in the brightness of its shin- 
ing Melchior, Balthasar, and Caspar rode 
to the blessed borders of the Holy City. 
Entering the portals of the immortal 
chamber, they lay down their crowns, 
typical of making reason minister to 
revelation, and with their crowns, their 
hearts in loving service to the King of 
Kings. They vie with each other in gen- 
erous expression to have their authority 
consecrated by the living hand of Him, 
from whom all rights flow. They are vir- 



98 STRAWS FROM THE MANGER. 

tually exalted to thrones eternal, and, 
from men of doubt and dreaming, they 
are canonized by the shining face of the 
Eternal. 

What a lesson the Epiphany has for a 
world, whose chief crimes come today 
from disorder created by disrespect for 
authority. False theories about the origin 
of rule are agitating the minds of men, 
who take off their hats to nothing, un- 
like the venerable majesties at the sancti- 
fied crib. The words of St. Paul : "All 
power is from God" are ignored. Men in 
misnamed religion, the very worst form 
of the mad world's crimes, constitute 
themselves their own guides in faith, 
making reason usurp revelation instead 
of being led thereby. So they end their 
lawless course in destroying Holy Writ 
today that but yesterday they deemed 
their sacred guide in faith and its duties. 
They land with Herod, the destroyer, in- 
stead of keeping to the course of the 
Magi. They follow the lights of reason 
and not the heavenly lead of Christ, and, 
like the infamous king, they slaughter, 



LITTLE CHRISTMAS. 99 

not babes indeed, but souls, and end in 
disaster. In the state there is no rever- 
ence for authority. Subjects usurp the 
privileges of rulers and despise the be- 
hests of law, forgetting that they only are 
true men who conquer self and put law in 
the place of whims. 

The falseness of the principle that au- 
thority comes from the people has made 
the people themselves lack reverence for 
constitutional power. It is true the peo- 
ple can, by their votes or by inheritance, 
name the ones they desire invested with 
authority, but God alone bestows the 
power. 

If men would regard well the conduct 
and the devotion of the visitors to Bethle- 
hem, then socialism, anarchy and the rest 
of the Herods in the systems of our day 
would be frustrated, and Christ's infinite 
splendor would shine on rulers and peo- 
ples. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservatlonTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-211- 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




: 



014 626 180 2 J* 






